Thyssenkrupp AT.PRO tec receives €1.8 million grant for decarbonization project

Thyssenkrupp AT.PRO tec (a subsidiary of Thyssenkrupp Materials Services) has received a €1.8 million European research grant for a blast furnace decarbonization project. This was reported by Primetals Technologies.

The grant was provided by the EU Research Fund for Coal and Steel (RFCS). The project aims to develop a hydrogen injection method based on a sequential pulse process technology that has been successfully tested at Thyssenkrupp Steel Europe’s large blast furnace in Germany. As a result, hydrogen will be injected directly into the blast furnace through its shaft.

The project will be completed in 2028. It brings together a consortium of the largest European players in the steel sector to move the concept from the laboratory stage to the industrial demonstration stage.

The core technology will be developed and provided by thyssenkrupp AT.PRO tec, while the furnace integration design and full-scale economic assessment will be performed by Primetals Technologies.

Analysis and modeling will be carried out by German and Austrian research institutes (VDEh-Betriebsforschungsinstitut, K1-MET).

Thyssenkrupp Steel Europe will provide industrial-scale laboratory facilities and the ability to load materials. The voestalpine Group will complete the consortium as the host for a pilot helium injection process to validate the results of the gas distribution simulation at the operating blast furnace at the Linz plant in Austria.

In addition to the grant, all the research partners will make contributions, bringing the total cost of the program to €3.5 million.

In October this year, Erdemir, a Turkish company that is part of the OYAK mining and metals group, tested hydrogen injection into blast furnace No. 1. The test was carried out in cooperation with Erdemir Engineering and Irish Linde, which operates in the field of industrial gases and engineering.